


fairytale bliss

by eldritchbee



Category: HuGっと！プリキュア | Hug tto! Precure, プリキュア | PreCure | Pretty Cure Series
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Canon Compliant, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Queerplatonic Relationships, internalized ableism, non-binary henri, parents acting kinda shitty and fucking their kids up, past bullying, with some liberties taken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-17 22:22:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16105016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldritchbee/pseuds/eldritchbee
Summary: He wishes he could at least confide in Homare, but she isn't the same these days. She's stronger, she wouldn't understand.He's changed too, but he doesn't think it's for the better. He doesn't want to move forward with it. He wants to stay just as he is. Maybe that's why he keeps the card.[Mostly canon compliant up to episode 33]





	fairytale bliss

* * *

 

_Where'd you wanna go?_  
_How much you wanna risk?_  
_I'm not looking for somebody_  
_With some superhuman gifts_  
_Some superhero_  
_Some fairytale bliss_  
_Just something I can turn to_  
_Somebody I can kiss_  
_I want something just like this_

* * *

 

 

The hero saves everyone in the end.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


He kept the calling card.

He knows that, in and of itself, is a betrayal.

He looks at it sometimes, when he’s sitting up in bed in the middle of the night, an aching running up the bones of his leg. That, he knows, is even worse. Even the words he says as he folds it up, stuffs it into the drawer by his nightstand underneath his medals and old pictures, does nothing. “Hooray, hooray, me. Hooray, hooray, precure.” The card is still in the drawer, he still takes it out

he still isn’t a precure.

He’s still growing weaker rather than stronger.

“Henri,” Homare says, and puts a hand on his shoulder, pulls him back, skates around him or watches him skate around _her_ . “Henri,” she says, tugging back the collar of his shirt or his hair, gentle, just to get his attention. “Henri!” when she’s clapping a hand over his mouth because the words slip so easily out it’s almost like they belong to him as well ( _precure_ ). “Henri,” all awed because Yoshimi dressed him and holds him out now like a portrait, her work _personified_. The card sits under a picture of him and her, both smiling, and when he remembers they both exist he also remembers that she doesn’t smile at him anymore. Not really. Not like them.

He wants to tell her, he does. Sometimes he folds the card in the picture, neat and careful not to crease their faces, and slips it into the pocket of his uniform. He tells himself he’ll tell her, he tells himself she’ll understand, it happened to her too. He remembers. He remembers dark days in middle school, where he’d gone to see her and only found remnants of long, blonde hair and a discarded ribbon in the trash.

She’ll understand, she will.

But then he sees her, laughing and smiling with the others beside her, and he stops. She’d shut him out after the fall, barely spoke to him until she started skating again, and it had nothing to do with him at all. He can’t do it.

So he laughs along instead.

(She told him how it happened for her, a bright flash of light from her chest and a gleaming gem. A desire to jump again, damn the consequences, damn the shadow pain that took over the right side of her body whenever she thought about the fall. She told him it took her two times to get it right, before she could become a star again, and he’d laughed then and told her practice makes perfect. But _he’s_ been the damsel twice now too, and the only thing that shone for him were the word _Criasu_ on a thick white business card.

He wonders, does she wake up in the middle of the night with those phantom pains still? Is it as bad as his real one, a bone not corrected, not healed right, never going to be the same again?

“Hooray, hooray, Homare. Hooray, hooray, me.”)

The card goes back to his nightstand.

It’s not a reality for her now. Not anymore.

***

His voice deepens and his body grows more muscle, his shoulders broaden, his bones stretch. There’s an ache up his leg if he steps wrong and an extra hour in front of the mirror getting his clothes just right to match his new growth. _Neither man nor woman, transcendent,_ Yoshimi calls him. _Myself_ , Henri calls it. And he still is, _he still is_ , none of this can stop him. But the card feels like it’s burning a hole in his nightstand when he rubs a finger against stubble on his chin

_you want to freeze time too_

he slams his hand on his vanity, spills make-up remover and bottles of foundation and blush on the floor. “I still am,” he says to the mirror, like the man is there in the room, standing right there in front of him.

(He doesn’t tell anyone, but he saw the man again. Once, walking with Homare and _her_ friends to school. The man looked at him just once, made eye contact once, and then looked at the girls and shook his head. The pity there made his chest burn, and he wishes he could throw at the man all the things he believes in. _I will do as I like and be who I like, you cannot tell me what to do. You cannot tell me who to be._ It’s easier for him to be certain of himself when someone else is trying to tell him otherwise.

It’s harder when he looks up at the sky when the earth rumbles and sees a bright yellow star. Something is telling him he cannot do something. Something is telling him he cannot be something.

He doesn’t tell anyone, but he saw the man again. Once, as the earth rumbled and he was distracted by a bright yellow star. “You’re jealous,” whispers the voice in his ear, and he swings his arm to attack, to shove, to push, but the man is already far away. He’s looking up at the star as well. “If things go like this, you may do something you regret,” he says. “You may lose her entirely, in the future.” He doesn’t tell anyone, but the words wring his heart with fear. When the man is gone and he turns to walk away he steps wrong and pain shoots up his leg. There’s a voice in his ear, “you can still do as you like, be as you like. You can be you, right now, this you that you like to be.”

He swings again, but there’s only air.)

There’s a voice that once called him _Wakamiya_ , derisive and with disbelief, frustration, envy. A voice he felt nothing but annoyance and exhaustion towards until the darkness inside of it held him up and screamed with pain. When Henri’s body hits against the side of the ice rink, sweat freezing on his skin, muscles aching from his practice, it’s there. It’s gentler now. “Henri,” and it comes with a water bottle and a smile and a touch of red on its cheeks because it’s still not used to saying a given name, no honorifics, no anything. Even his coach doesn’t watch him practice as often as Aisaki Masato these days.

It’s a voice that makes him smile back now.

“Was there something wrong with that last jump?” Until it says _that_. “It seemed… off.”

“Yes, yes,” he says breezily, like what happened was nothing. Like pain isn’t shooting up to his knee. “You caught me. But that’s what practice is for, right?” Masato notices little details, little pieces of people’s appearance or their tone of voice, but he can’t notice anything except his own heartbeat in his ears when Henri leans in close the way he does, when Henri blows him a kiss. It’s cruel, maybe, but that’s why Henri does it.

He’s good at details too.

It’s cruel, maybe, to use Masato’s feelings against him when they’re still so young and fresh, but he’s more a princess than a hero and so the stories will say he can’t help but bewitch all who see him.

Masato never told him how it happened, and neither does Emiru. He hears no stories of Masato’s sister finding him throwing out old baby blankets and stuffed animals because he’s a man now and men don’t play with toys. Masato’s never told him about the disapproval in his grandfather’s voice that he’d done everything possible to make _stop_ nor did he say a word about his mother’s hopes for Masato to be a dashing knight saving a princess and Emiru to be a princess waiting on her prince. Neither of the Aisaki children detail the ways their father genders and classes instruments (piano for a high class lady, violin for a gentleman, guitars and saxophones and drums belong to commoners) nor the way their parents always seem to be acting out some noble theatre event, chewing scenery that isn’t even there. Henri _sees_ almost none of this (though he’d met the Aisaki parents once, where they called him Masato’s beautiful lady friend, a title he didn’t mind though Masato took it as a reason to never invite Henri over again).

But he sees the way Masato moves and Emiru speaks and the awkward way they move even around each other. The way Masato speaks to the other boys in his class, the way Emiru speaks _in general_ corresponds to their parent’s act. The Oshiimaida created from Masato’s soul, the dark part Henri had embraced, made it even easier to see. _You’re not fit for the role they made for you._

_And that’s not a bad thing._

It’s cruel, how he tries to make Masato realize it. Selfish too, he thinks.

(It should go like this: “Hooray, hooray, Masato. Hooray, hooray, me.”)

“Henri,” Masato says, shooting away when someone jostles him too close. “Henri,” he says, something tight in his voice, just like his hand over Henri’s. “Henri, something’s wrong,” when moving in close does little more than make Masato turn bright red, not quite disabling all of his senses. “Your leg, when you did that move -”

“Even I can do a jump wrong, Masato. That’s what practice is for.”

“But even when you walk -”

“You’re _seeing_ things.”

“But _Henri_ you’ve been looking -” and somehow Masato has overcome his fears again, reached for Henri’s hand and almost, almost catches him.

“I’m fine!” and somehow, it’s Henri who pulls away, puts so much space between them that they both feel the empty air between them. “Leave it, I’m _fine_.” He changes his schedule after that, changes where he skates, because the look in Masato’s eyes

well

he can’t help but see anything but _pity_.

***

Masato is nothing special. Masato is a boring boy with an argyle sweater vest and glasses that weren’t cheap but certainly weren’t anything that brought him notice. Masato can’t play or sing as well as his sister can, and he can’t _act_ like his parents, his face is too honest (though honest doesn’t always equal good, Lulu will say _that_ where Emiru feels she can’t). Masato can’t make a lunch, the ones he brings are packaged from the store. He can pay for a ticket to a rock concert, he can pay for dinner, he can pay for instruments and tea and Henri’s favorite bread, but he’s nothing special.

“I just want to _help_ ,” he says, standing in Henri’s room for the first time ever, a place Masato had always been too afraid to be. And that’s all he can do, offer advice no one wants to hear, misguided and strict, buy a gift or a meal, be blunt

hold a hand.

Masato’s never felt a glowing gem in his chest either. He’s no hero, no knight like his mother wants, no prince. He’s a background noble, the nameless brother of another magical princess who does nothing of interest, who has no story to be told. Who simply _exists_.

Maybe that’s why, when Masato points at the card in Henri’s hand and asks, “ _What’s that_ ,” Henri reaches out and pulls Masato to sit beside him. He shows Masato the card and watches carefully as Masato flinches, looks a little sick from the darkness that the card held in it. He probably doesn't even know _why_ it makes him feel this way. Still, it burns itself into his eyes.

“A business card?”

And the way Masato says it, with a laugh like he’s trying to figure out if that’s the punchline to a joke, is what makes Henri crush the thing in his hand for the first time. Makes him laugh out loud, for the first time, about those dark dark thoughts as he throws the card across the room. “It’s nothing. Someone’s messing with me.”

Masato flinches, it wasn’t too long ago that those words could have been used to describe _him_.

“ _Henri_ ,” Masato says, and it’s so many things at once. Nervous and afraid and a little frustrated and angry and shaky with sweaty palms. If Masato were simply patronizing, or simply sympathetic, or anything but _unsure_ and _messy_ , Henri doesn’t think he would have said a single thing.

But, “I broke my ankle once. I didn’t even realize it, I thought it was just sprained. It’s healed all wrong now.”

“... oh. And…” he motions to where the card fell when Henri threw it.

“Someone’s messing with me, because they know I won’t have a future anymore. I won’t be able to skate. I'm running - I'm running out of time.” And maybe, maybe, if Masato didn’t look so horrified and confused at the same time, wanting so badly to console but finding no words because all he could offer were blunt truths, Henri wouldn’t have allowed himself to cry. He wouldn’t have allowed the panicked edge in his voice, he wouldn’t have allowed the emotion of it all to flood out like sludge on the ground. “He keeps saying he can stop it but he can’t, he can’t, he’s wrong, I know he’s wrong, I know it I know it I know it but -” he wouldn’t have curled up against Masato’s shoulder the second Masato reached out to him, he wouldn’t have sobbed. “I want it to stop so bad.”

There’s mascara on the white button up under Masato’s vest and fog on his glasses and a shine in his eyes. He has one arm wrapped around Henri and one hand at his side.

There’s no hero here to save him. No bright yellow star burning the monster who’s holding him hostage. No gem lights up his chest and covers him with achingly beautiful light. For once, he doesn’t even know if he can save _himself_.

And _Masato_

Masato can’t save _anyone_. But still...

“I want it to stop _so bad_.”

But Masato’s fingers tighten on Henri’s shoulder, and Masato’s glasses and nose dig into Henri’s head, and Masato’s voice is so tight it’s starting to fray when he says: “It’s not going to stop.” And then he pulls away. “Emiru keeps saying this, though, so I guess

it’s not going to _stop_ but even so

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


hooray, hooray, Henri. Hooray, hooray -”

the words hang in the air.

**Author's Note:**

> Finishing notes:
> 
> a) This is un-beta'd. I'm sorry for every mistake I've definitely made.
> 
> b) The reason it's only MOSTLY canon compliant is: I'm invoking death of the author on everything Toei says about the Aisaki family. I don't see how Masato would be how he is without multiple sources pushing some role on him, nor can I see Masato being the only reason for Emiru's own anxieties. It's your choice how far that goes when you read into it.  
> b2) It's gonna end up being Not Canon anyway because I wrote this literally with ep 33 being the most recent one so I have no idea what's fucking up Henri's ankle.
> 
> c) Henri is non-binary / agender here, Henri is never cis anywhere
> 
> d) Masato is gay as all hell
> 
> e) Precure ruined my entire life I can never go back
> 
> f) The song is "Something Just Like This" by Coldplay + The Chainsmokers


End file.
